SPECIAL REPORT: By Robert Inlakesh
Israelis are determined to erase the evidence of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, through the use of paid and instructed propagandists to reshape the historical record.
Zionists have also taken over social media platforms. Those who are critical of Israel are being censored or arrested.
From YouTube to X, Wikipedia, and TikTok, Zionists are capturing all means of communication to erase the evidence of its genocide, reshape the historical record, and censor those critical of it.
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Meanwhile, the Israel Lobby exercises its power through intimidation, paying influencers to endorse it, and arresting dissenters whom they frame as terrorists.
Last December, Israel announced it was boosting its Foreign Affairs Ministry “hasbara” (propaganda) budget by an extra US$150 million.
Back in August, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted to reporters that Tel Aviv was losing to “propaganda” war.
“I think that we’ve not been winning [the propaganda war], to put it mildly … There are vast forces arrayed against us,” he stated at the time, blaming the algorithms for this defeat.
Dismantling free speech
Since then, Israel has been working to dismantle free speech and censor everything critical of it, across social media, as part of an all-encompassing crackdown.
This press conference was no accident; instead, it was part of a much larger scheme that began in July with a targeted campaign aimed at brainwashing right-wing conservatives in the West.
The propaganda plan was hatched in three parts: One being Netanyahu going on a number of right-wing podcasts; another being a social media censorship campaign, along with the financing of propaganda trips to Israel for right-wing influencers.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s appearance on the Nelk Boys podcast was his first stop in his attempt to revive right-wing support for him personally, yet it received enormous backlash at the time.
The podcasters were widely condemned for both “normalising” and asking no critical questions of the Prime Minister, who currently has an International Criminal Court (ICC) war crimes warrant out for his arrest.
The Israeli Prime Minister then went on a round of coordinated interviews across the American corporate media, as a range of other right-wing podcasters hosted him. The difference between the corporate media and the podcasters who hosted him was that the podcasters were even less critical and actively worked to bolster his image.
These disingenuous podcast hosts even attempted to frame themselves as defying cancel culture, being edgy and going against the mainstream, despite the fact that they were simply doing a worse job than that of the corporate media, battling nothing more than their own followings.
Erica Mindel – censorship Tsar
Meanwhile, in the background, TikTok hired Erica Mindel, an ex-Israeli soldier and ex-ADL employee who openly bragged of her loyalty to Israel, as its new “Hate Speech” censorship Tsar.
A move that appeared to have gone relatively unnoticed, but began to shape what was deemed acceptable discourse on the platform.
As this was in the works, the Israeli foreign ministry had already funded trips for 16 right-wing influencers to travel to Israel on closely coordinated propaganda trips. Their goal was to bring 550 such influencers on fully financed tours by the end of the year, which later included figures like Tommy Robinson and even former rapper Azealia Banks.
Upon visiting the White House in October, Benjamin Netanyahu attended a meeting with right-wing influencers and openly discussed ideas to capture social media platforms.
At this point, the agenda to kill content critical of Israel was already underway, as the TikTok app that the Israel Lobby sought to ban just a year prior fell into the hands of pro-Israel billionaires.
The world’s second-richest man and top donor to the Israeli military, Larry Ellison, is a key figure in this picture, as his company, Oracle, is poised to take over TikTok. The move was recently praised by The Times of Israel as “raising hopes for tougher anti-Semitism rules”.
Meanwhile, Ellison was busy buying up CBS News and installing the completely inexperienced, vehemently pro-Israel journalist, Bari Weiss, as the channel’s top executive.
Inexperienced for role
Weiss, whose claim to fame was being a temporary opinion piece writer at The New York Times before leaving and attempting to carve out a career as a right-wing commentator and, later, news outlet owner, is clearly inexperienced for taking on her current role.
Ellison just so happens to be a major stakeholder in Elon Musk’s Tesla and X.
In early October, YouTube also decided to quietly delete at least 700 videos from the platform that documented Israeli human rights violations, along with the accounts of three prominent Palestinian human rights groups: Al-Haq, Al-Mezan Center, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
The Intercept published an article explaining the move as a “capitulation” to President Donald Trump’s recent sanctions, enacted to shield Israel from accountability for its copiously documented war crimes.
Then there is Wikipedia co-founder, Jimmy Wales, who came out against the website’s page covering the Gaza Genocide, asserting that it “needs immediate attention”.
“At present, the lead and overall presentation state, in Wikipedia’s voice, that Israel is committing genocide, although that claim is highly contested,” Wales stated, claiming it violates the platform’s “neutral” point of view.
At present, every major human rights organisation, including Israel’s own B’Tselem, all the top legal organisations relevant to the issue, the United Nations, and the most representative body of genocide scholars, all agree that Israel is committing genocide.
ICJ’s “plausible genocide’
In fact, the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s ruling on the matter considers it a plausible genocide. The only ones disputing this fact are the Israelis themselves, ideologically committed and/or paid Zionist propagandists, in addition to Israeli allies who are also implicated in the crime of all crimes.
Objective truth is, however, not relevant to any of these bad-faith actors. This is because Israel and its powerful lobbying arms are actively pursuing a total crackdown on criticism of Israeli war crimes.
On X (Twitter), a new censorship warning has been placed over all images and videos from Gaza that show Israeli war crimes, also.
What is currently happening is a widespread attempt to wipe content from the internet, erase the truth, ban, deport, and arrest those critical of Israel. All this as the Israel Lobby brings social media and corporate media under its direct control, using the excuse of “anti-Semitism” and “terrorism” to do so.
Israel’s censorship crackdown, which the Trump administration is working alongside to complete, is by far the worst iteration of cancel culture yet.
The ongoing crackdown on academic freedom, for example, in order to silence criticism of Israel, is by far the most severe in US history.
Meanwhile, the ADL has just set up a “Mamdani monitor” to track the democratically elected incoming New York City mayor.
Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specialising on Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle and it is republished with permission.
